1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to wireless communications systems, and particularly to the management of high-speed data transmission in wireless communications systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless communication systems have become nearly ubiquitous for the transmission of information signals between a mobile user and another party served by a mobile or fixed network. The focus of early wireless systems, particularly first generation analog systems, was primarily voice communications. With second generation wireless systems, including CDMA, TDMA and GSM, came varying degrees of improvement in terms of voice quality, network capacity and enhanced services. However while second generation systems are suitable to the provision of voice, low-rate data, fax and messaging, they are generally not able to effectively and efficiently address requirements for high-speed mobile data rates.
Third-generation wireless communication systems, using wide-band channel management technologies such as CDMA, will effectively handle a large variety of services, such as voice, video, data and imaging. Among the features supported by third-generation systems is the transmission of high-speed data between a mobile terminal and a land-line network. As is known, high-speed data communication is often characterized by a short transmission “burst” at a high data transmission rate, followed by some longer period of little or no transmission activity from the data source.
To accommodate the bursty nature of such high-speed data services in third generation systems, it is necessary for the communication system to assign a large bandwidth segment (corresponding to the high data rate) from time to time for the duration of the data burst. With the ability of third generation systems to handle such bursty high-speed data transmission, throughput and delay for users is advantageously improved. However, because of the large amount of instantaneous bandwidth required for transmission of a burst of high-speed data, the management of such bursts, and particularly the allocation of power and system resources thereto, should be handled with care to avoid unwarranted interference with other services using the same frequency allocation.